ORACLE VS GOOGLE: When a company is paying you tens of millions per
year if not hundreds of millions, it’s probably a good idea to be on their good side. But,
it looks like Oracle didn’t have this common sense as they would go ahead and sue Google in
2010. If this was for some sort of serious issue like a breach of contract or unethical practice,
this would’ve been completely understandable. But, this related to a petty copyright issue regarding
an open source programming language called Java. Essentially, Oracle was claiming that while Java
itself was free and opensource, Google’s use of Java was violating Oracle’s intellectual
property rights. And the amount that Oracle was trying to claim? A disgusting $9 billion.
At first, you may be swayed to give Oracle a chance because hey, it’s not like Google is a
saint themselves. But, here’s the thing, this is not the first time that Oracle has tried to
form a petty lawsuit. Eversince they started acquiring other companies in the late 1990s
and especially the 2000s, Oracle has shifted much of their focus to quote on quote “protecting what
they have” as opposed to creating real value in the market place. In fact, Oracle has built up a
history of suing anything that moves, and they’ve become a dreaded patent troll. In most cases,
the companies that patent trolls sue simply give in and come to some sort of settlement
because they don’t want to waste more energy or effort in actually defending themselves. But,
this was not the same case with Google. For Google, it wasn't even about the money. If it was,
they could’ve easily settled in the early 2010s for far less than $9 billion. And this would’ve
likely been cheaper, not to menion less stressful, than waging an 11 year long battle against Oracle
that escalated to the supreme court. But, Google had no other choice because Oracle wasn’t just
targeting Google. Oracle was looking to set a precedent that they could sue anyone for using
Java in way that they didn’t like. Also, if Oracle was able to set this type of precedent,
it was just a matter of time until other companies tried to set similar precedents
with their programming languages whether that be Typescript, Swift, or C#. So, Google had
to step up to the plate not just for themselves but for the developer community as a whole. So,
here’s the story of how Oracle sued Google only to regret it for the rest of their lives.
ACQUIRING JAVA: Taking a look back, this whole saga
can be traced back to early 2009 when Oracle started trying to buy out Sun Microsystems.
If you’re not familiar with Sun Microsystems, they were a tech giant throughout the 1980s
and 90s who did everything from producing computer hardware to developing programming languages. They
were still massive moving into the 2000s, but the dotcom crash and subsequently the 2008 financial
crisis would drag down the company substantially. Pretty soon, Sun started posting quarterly losses,
laying of thousands of employees, and running out of cash. Normally, such companies would eventually
just go bankrupt and new up and coming companies would take their place. But, Sun was different.
While their business was getting hammered, they still had a boatload of intellectual property
including Java, as they were the creators of Java. This made them a prime acquisition target, and it
didn’t take long for larger companies like IBM and Oracle to become quite intrigued. Oracle would end
up winning the bid for $7.4 billion in April of 2009, and pretty soon, they had their hands on
Sun. At first, much of the media speculated that this was a bold expansion strategy for Oracle as
this would be their first step into hardware. While this was foreign territory for Oracle,
it also made sense. Oracle was already the go to software company for hundreds of thousands of
companies, governments, and academic institutions. So, maybe they could become the go to hardware
player as well. But, from the very beginning, Larry Ellison, the founder and CEO of Oracle,
had his eyes on Java. In fact, he even went as far as claiming that Java was the single most
important software asset they had ever acquired. Sun’s CEO assumed that this was because Java would
allow Oracle to offer enterprise solutions at much cheaper prices, but Ellison had a much less
honorable plan. Shortly after completing the deal with Sun, Ellison would turn around and sue Google
over Android’s use of Java. But, wait a minute, why didn’t Google just get permission to use Java
in the first place? Well, first of all, Java is an open source programming language, and Oracle
affirms this themselves in one of their blog posts. And second of all, Google actually did ask
for permission as soon as they acquired Android in 2005. Sun wanted $30 to $50 million in return
for letting Google officially use Java which really wasn’t a crazy ask. Google was willing
to pay this no problem, but money wasn’t the only condition. Sun wanted Google to make all of their
implementations of Java compatible with the Java virtual machine and other Java programs. This was
a dealbreaker for Google. All Google wanted was a fork of Java that they could build upon. But,
Sun was basically trying to get Google to support Java indefinintely. To no surprise,
this deal would fall through, but Google would move forward nonetheless. After all,
Java is opensource, so getting permission was really just more of a courtesy. Sun knew that they
couldn’t reasonably challenge Google, so they just went about their day, but Oracle had other plans.
THE BATTLE BEGINS:
Google went ahead and created their own programming platform that was strongly
inspired by Java, and they tailored it to be used with mobile devices, but wait a minute,
what did Google even copy? I mean, you can’t just copy a programming language itself right? Well,
that’s right, you can’t really copy a language itself, but you can copy things that are built
off that language. In the case of Google, they copied Java’s API packages. If you’re
not familiar with APIs, they’re basically just code that can be used to establish communication
between servers and devices in a predefined manner. For example, let’s say you want this
cool Twitter integration on your website. You could try to replicate Twitter’s codebase,
or you could just call a Twitter API and have this section appear magically. Java had dozens
of such APIs that made their virtual machines and programs substantially more accessible
to developers. Given that Google wanted to make Android as easy and familiar as Java development,
they not only copied 37 Java APIs, but they also gave them the same names. We should note that
they created way more on their own as their total library would end up including 168 API packages.
Not to mention, much of the implementation code was different as well. But, nonetheless,
Google ended up with 11,500 lines of copied code, and this would become the basis of Oracle’s entire
lawsuit. The lawsuit would make its way to the jury about a year and a half after the lawsuit
was filed. At first, the jury had a bit of trouble coming to a conclusion. They established that yes,
though limited, Google had copied portions of Java. The real question though was whether this
was covered by Fair Use, which was a much more difficult question to answer. But,
after seeing a couple of presentations from Google regarding how they modified and altered Java,
the jury would have an easy time siding with Google. The final verdict was that “As long as the
specific code written to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright
Act to write his or her own method to carry out exactly the same function or specification of
any and all methods used in the Java API.” So, you would think this was an open and shut case
right? Well, no as Oracle would of course appeal which escalated the case to the Federal Circuit
who looked at the case from a completely different perspective in early 2014. Instead of trying to
determine whether or not Google’s use was fair, this court decided to focus on whether APIs
were copyrightable. And they would end up ruling that Oracle’s API packages were indeed creative,
original, and resembled a taxonomy, and therefore, they were copyrightable. Google obviously couldn’t
accept this, so this time, they would appeal. Their argument was that the copyrightability of
Java was irrelevant. The question should be whether or not Google’s use was fair,
and the Second District Court would agree with Google’s stance in 2016.
Just because Java was copyrightable did not mean that Google infringed on said copyright. Now, the
ball was back in Oracle’s court, and they would of course appeal once again which takes us to 2018.
This time, the court would side with Oracle on the basis that Google’s use of Java was commercial,
and thus it was not eligible to be covered by fair use. At this point, Google had 2 wins and Oracle
had 2 wins, and there was only one way to settle this debate once and for all: the Supreme Court.
THE FINAL SHOWDOWN: This was no longer just a battle between
two tech companies playing corporate games. This was a tech phenomenon as a win for Oracle would
usher in an era of restrictive development. In fact, this battle was so monumental that
the entire tech world would get involved, and they would all rally behind Google. This
included Microsoft, Mozilla, Red Hat Inc, IBM, the Computer & Communications Industry Association,
the Internet Association, and even the Auto Care Association. We also saw 72 intellectual property
scholars and 93 computer scientists throw their hats in for Google. Meanwhile, the only notable
organization that backed Oracle was the Trump Organization. And I think the only reason they
supported Oracle was because they wanted Oracle to play into their TikTok takeover plan. So,
little to say, the cards were very much stacked against Oracle. This is very much how the Supreme
Court felt as well as they would side with Google in a 6-2 majority opinion. The bottom line was
that copyright laws were created to incentivize the progress of science and useful arts. The idea
is that if inventors are able to enjoy exclusive financial benefits for an extended period of time,
they would be more likely to invent great things. But, Oracle wasn’t trying to invent or progress.
They were being patent trolls and preventing further progress just so that they could make
even more money. And therefore, Google’s limited copying of the Java SE Application Programming
Interface constituted a fair use of that material under copyright law. We should note, however,
that Justice Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented with the majority. They felt that by
copying Oracle’s code, Google “erased 97.5% of the value of Oracle’s partnership with Amazon,
made tens of billions of dollars, and established its position as the owner of the largest mobile
operating system in the world.” And thus, Google should be held accountable for damages. But,
given that 6 justices sided with Google, that ended up being the final verdict.
THE AFTERMATH:
So, in the end, Google came out on top which was a massive win for the developers and the tech
industry at large. But, even if Oracle had won the legal battle, it would’ve been a loss for Oracle
as a whole. Here’s the thing, companies don’t pour billions of dollars into programming languages and
offer them for free out of the goodness of their hearts. They do this to encourage adoption and
popularity which will in turn give them influence and control which can then be monetized. So,
creating a programming language or any platform for that matter is very much a long term game.
But Oracle got caught up in the short term and tried to milk Google for fast profit,
and now they’re gonna have to pay for that indefinitely. For obvious reasons,
companies and developers will be hesitant of working with Oracle because they don’t want
to get caught up in Google’s situation. And we can already see the impact. After
holding the #1 spot in terms of popularity for over a decade, Java fell to #3. And it’s
likely that this trend will simply continue as the sentiment is very much turning against Java. Also,
it’s not just Oracle’s programming business that will suffer either. Companies will think twice
before doing any sort of business with Oracle. Google, for instance, is slowly switching to SAP,
and this seems to be a larger industry wide trend. And given Oracle’s history, you can’t really blame
them. And that’s how Oracle’s smug decision to sue Google destroyed their reputation. Are
you team Google or team Oracle? Comment that down below. Also, drop a like if you’re not a
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